


What's a Bit of Mass Genocide Between Friends?

by Queen of the Castle (queen_of_the_castle_77)



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Depressing, M/M, Self-cest, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:55:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_of_the_castle_77/pseuds/Queen%20of%20the%20Castle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I can't seem to live without you anymore, but that doesn't mean our story is some kind of fairy-tale romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's a Bit of Mass Genocide Between Friends?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ten_plus_ten on LJ. Want some overly existential angst? Well then, you've come to the right place. The title's ironic, obviously.

You shouldn't be here. It's wrong on so many levels.

It's an affront to the most basic order of things for you to be here; the universe has rules against there being two of the same person in the same place and time for a reason. You share all my memories, and so must be able to recall the importance of maintaining the laws of time, but for some reason it seems you're not particularly affected by them anymore.

Are you unaffected by guilt as well? There's often a decided lack of it shadowing your eyes when my own meet them. In those moments, you don't even seem to feel remorse for wiping out an entire species in barely a moment. The power of the universe was in your hands, and you used it without compunction. I swore I couldn't. Not again. Anyone who _could_ bring themselves to do that, given all we've been through, is a hazard to everyone and everything in the universe around them.

You're obviously far too dangerous to be left alone.

But that's not the real reason I keep you by my side, even now. If that was all, I would have offered you the chance to stay with Rose the way I initially meant to. If anyone could have helped you and kept you out of trouble despite yourself, surely it would have been her.

No, something far more selfish motivates me to bind us together this way. I crave the closeness that can only be had with someone who truly understands, and I can only imagine you feel the same, given the evidence. The pull of it is magnetic. There's a cycle of almost tangible energy that builds again and again between us, too quickly becoming overwhelming. When we finally snap together, we inexorably find ourselves expending that pent-up tension thrusting together, our identical limbs in a tangle, mingling sweat forming rivers in the tiny gaps left between demanding bodies. 

Tonight, as I shove you backwards against the bedhead and pepper your chest with bites, I marvel at how your moans sound exactly the way mine would if you were curling your tongue along the insides of my thighs or sliding it down the crevice of my lower spine. You prove the point when you reach out and scrape your fingernails down my back, making me echo the noises you're making. The connection between us is strongest in these moments, when you react just as I would, and when each of us knows precisely how and where to touch the other. 

When you handle me this way – showing yourself to be a true savant at playing my body – my shame at remembering what we've both done to end up here together is able to ebb away slightly, quieted (though never entirely vanquished). Your presence may bring my guilt to the forefront, but you also have the power to relieve it. Like your very existence, it's a paradox I can't bring myself to resolve.

Make no mistake, though. Yes, I constantly desire your touch, and I can't seem to live without you anymore, but that doesn't mean our story is some kind of fairy-tale romance. Love and pain might be old friends, but at times just being around you feels like pure self-imposed torture.

After all, you are the living, breathing evidence of my failures. Every gasp drawn from deep in your throat as I thrust into you and take you in hand is a reminder that I'm too weak not to want more and more of this. The exquisite way you cry out into the night and collapse against me, shuddering, is a culmination of my inability to stay away from you. 

If I were stronger, I'd have left you in that parallel universe, hopefully to have learned to live out a worthier life than I can ever hope to lead. Instead, I've resigned us both to this. 

I can't make you better. And I fear that you make me worse.

For these brief periods when we're so wholly joined, you lessen _my_ guilt as well. I forget the precise number and names of the people that have died because of me, and that our entire planet burned at my hands, and that I couldn't stop you from repeating history all over again. These are memories that I can never afford to put aside, and yet I hunger for those moments when you make me feel something strong enough to drown out the usual deep ache in my chest. It's wrong to want that reprieve, and especially to actively seek it out. I _know_ that. 

In the space of those many racing heartbeats afterwards, when we're both wholly spent and I'm still a bit too exhausted to leap from the bed and retreat to the shower to wash the evidence of my weakness away, I think to myself that perhaps I should hate the constant reminder of who I really am, and could be. Perhaps I should hate you for the fact that sometimes I'm so intent on being with you whatever the cost that it just ceases to _matter_ to me what you've done – what we've _both_ done. 

Your mind works the same as mine. Of course you know what I'm thinking.

You breathe hot against my ear, spooned against my back. "You know, it's not _me_ you hate."

It's no surprise how well you understand (far too well, in point of fact). You're _me_ , at least in most of the ways that matter.

But I still _do_ hate that you're absolutely right, and that we both know it.


End file.
